Saturday, February 6, 2016

Week in Review--Dental Health


Reading:


This week we continued to focus on summarizing and retelling a story in sequence of beginning, middle and end. Summarizing is taking selections of text and reducing them to their bare essentials: the gist, the key ideas, and the main points that are worth noting and remembering.  Students need continued practice with this strategy because as readers, we capture the most important parts of text but express them in a shorter version so the text is more easily remembered. As readers we need to absorb the meaning of the passage and then capture in our own words the most important elements from the original so we can remember, organize, and understand the importance of what we have read. Readers are able to articulate the main point of a selection. At times finding key words or phrases may be helpful to support their ideas.

 
This week we also focused on the “-ub and -ug” word families. We created word family lists, played a game called a word hunt and added the new words into our Friday game of SNAP!

 
Our vocabulary words this week were:
  • pond
  • spurt
  • travel
  • pleased
  • information
  • perhaps
 

We enjoyed learning about these words, reading/listening to them in a book and reviewing the words late on in the week. We created our own vocabulary review book using Book Creator!
 
Poem of the Week



We also practiced responding to a story during our reading block this week by choosing a book from our book box and creating a book in book creator highlighting special parts of the book. Students took a picture of the cover of the book and a few pages and then told about them in their own words. A few examples can be seen below.
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 



Writing:


This class is absolutely blowing me away with their writing during this unit. They are all experts in so many topics and are teaching both myself and their classmates more facts than we ever knew that they knew! We have had books on falcons, play-doh, homes, school, iPads, turtles, books, recess and more! I am excited to continue to see what they come up with to write. As we are gaining independence in writing these types of books, we are beginning to create them in our Book Creator app. The student draws the picture, types the sentence and records a reading of the page.I will post student examples of this next week!
 
Math:

We focused on three different math concepts this week. We started the week off by learning how to “count on” from a given set. If we know that there are 5 objects in front of us, we do not need to count those five objects. All we would need to do is start at the number 5 and count on the remaining objects. We practiced counting on orally from any given number, using objects, counting on with a ten frame and base one and ten blocks.


We had a few new choices introduced during independent math work.These choices had students practicing drawing their shapes after they created a picture using various shapes they didn't copy that picture they created with the math tools and draw the picture by copying it with those shapes. A second choice was added where students practice drawing and creating base 10 blocks as tens and ones with numbers 0 through 20.
A couple other math concepts that we focused on this week were heavier versus lighter and longer versus shorter. We compared various objects on their link in their weight throughout the week.


















































































Content:

This week was all about dental health. We learned about ways to keep her teeth healthy and clean as well as how to keep them strong. We watched several videos on how to keep our teeth healthy and clean. We focused on the right types of food we need to eat and food we should stay away from. We know that we love to have a candy and it is OK to have it in moderation but we shouldn't have it all day every day. We also need to remember to brush our teeth twice a day once in the morning and once before we go to bed at night. A few other things we learned that can help our teeth are flossing, mouthwash and visiting the dentist at least once a year. We had a special guest who works in a dentist office visit us this week and tell us all about ways to keep her teeth healthy and clean. We finish the week off by practicing brushing a brown dirty tooth and making a white shiny and clean. We learned that we needed to brush in circles and not back-and-forth we practice this technique on Friday when we were painting our brown tooth white we brushed with a toothbrush in circles to cover the entire tooth.





















PRACTICE AT HOME:
Measure items throughout your house and describe them using the terms "heavier/lighter" and "longer/shorter".

Next Week:
  • In reading we will focus on Back Up and Reread.
  • In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
  • In math we will focus SUBTRACTION.
  • Our theme next week is all about Valentine's Day. Be sure to send in 22 Valentine's with your child on Friday. They must be filled out prior to coming to school. We will not be filling the cards out at school.
  
Important Dates/Information:
      • 2/11-K-2 Behavior Celebration
      • 2/12-Valentine's Party
      • 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL
      • 2/18--Family Fitness Frenzy at MME 6:00PM
      • 2/25 ABC's of Ag Field Trip to McCutcheon High School
      • 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee



Monday, February 1, 2016

Week in Review-Polar Animals


Reading:

This week was all about identifying the main idea and key details of a story. Summarizing is one way we teach students to be able to do this skill. Summarizing is taking sections of text and pulling out the most important parts of what was read. It is deciding what is worth remembering in a selection and capturing it in your own words. As readers, it's important to summarize what we read so we can remember, organize, and understand the importance of the selection. Summarizing can often be a challenge for any level of reader. This is because they try to retell the whole story with great detail and struggle with finding the most critical elements of the story.

How to help your child with this strategy at home?
 
  1. When reading with your child, model how to summarize. After finishing a few pages or a chapter, stop and summarize what has happened. State the main ideas and organize the events of the story.
  2. After reading a story, have your child draw a picture of the most important information of the story. This will help your child to focus on what the main idea of the story was by deciding what parts of the story to include in the picture.
  3. Read one chapter in a book or a portion of a picture book and question your child about what was read. Questions to ask your child after reading include:
    • What is this section about?
    • What are the main ideas of this section? What is your evidence?
    • What is not important to remember in this selection? Why?

 
This week in reading with our iPads we took pictures of polar animals and put them into the app Pic Collage. After taking the picture we wrote at least three facts we knew about the animal and then we could decorate the picture by changing the back ground and adding stickers!
 





























Vocabulary review! We absolutely LOVED our vocabulary words this week. One of our favorites was about the planets! We learned about each planet and watched a video that sang a song telling us important facts about each planet!









Math:

Last week we learned all about the number 100 and saw what a 100 block piece looks like. This week was all about ten and one block pieces. A group of ten one pieces makes a ten block and ten-ten block pieces make a 100 block piece! We learned how to show those pieces using math tools and in by drawing the number pieces. We also learned how to show number pieces using numbers 10-19. We practiced by drawing the number pieces, using an app for the number pieces and showing the tens/ones in a number bond! We will continue practicing with these number pieces broken down into tens and ones both whole group and we will add them into our math choices!










































Writing:

Students wrote their very first informational writing piece this week! They took a topic they were experts in, wrote at least 3 true facts they knew about the topic and filled in a planning page. After the planning page was complete, we used the page to help us write an informational writing book. By the end of the week, each student have a four page informational book written on a topic they were experts in! We will continue writing these types of books for the next several weeks! Eventually we will write the books without needing the planning page.








Content:


We learned all about polar animals this week! We started off the week by watching videos specifically on penguins, polar bears, arctic fox, snowy owls and more with our iPad partners. We then shared what we learned about these animals and created two class Popplets. We went on throughout the week learning what makes these animals so special and even completed our first Google Classroom discussion question sharing what our favorite polar animal is! By the end of the week, we created a penguin out of shapes we have learned in class!















Extra:


We had another Mystery Skype this week! This time our new friends were from Texas! We learned that they rarely get snow, they have two playgrounds (just like us!) and they have a lot of trees!

Another exciting thing happened this week! Mrs. Millburg’s husband is a State Police Trooper and he brought his K9 partner to tell us all about how a dog gets to work and help out the police! We even got to pet the dog and watch him sniff out and find a special treat in the cafeteria. Thank you to Mr. Millburg and Colt for coming to our school!













































PRACTICE AT HOME:
Take numbers 10-19 and break them down into tens and ones using number bonds and drawing number pieces!

Next Week:
  • In reading we will focus on Telling a Connected Story.
  • In writing we will continue our unit on informational writing pieces.
  • In math we will focus counting on.
  • Our theme next week is all about Dental Health
  
Important Dates/Information:

    • 2/11-K-2 Behavior Celebration
    • 2/12-Valentine's Party
    • 2/15--President's Day-NO SCHOOL (possible make-up snow day if needed)
    • 2/26 K-2 Movie Matinee